Achieving maximum sales with minimal budget in a short period of time through bold organizational reform and unifying and automating advertising effectiveness analysis

Cross-media communication plans and budget allocation are issues

Q. Please tell me your responsibilities.

The Publicity Department is responsible for the company's overall brand management, as well as advertising production and placement, sports sponsorship, etc. Previously, the publicity staff for offline media and online media were each responsible for everything from creative production to media buying, but in April 2020, we changed the organizational structure and switched to a system that integrates teams and allows for cross-sectional communication.

Q. This year, "MAGELLAN" is being used in the "au PAY" business. Please tell us about the characteristics of the cashless market.

In recent years, the cashless market has grown dramatically. According to a survey, the number of store transactions in the code payment market, such as "au PAY," increased 2019 times in 15.7 compared to the previous year._■However, due to changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for cashless payments is increasing.

In this context, our company's "au PAY" is expanding its business while leveraging the connections with customers that have been cultivated through the au brand.

* As of 2020 year

Q. Please tell us about some of the challenges you have faced so far.

There were organizational challenges and promotion challenges.

First, there were three organizational issues. The first was that we were unable to design communication plans or allocate budgets across media. Because the organizational structure was such that each medium was assigned a different person, we were trying to maximize the effect on a media-by-media basis, and the structure made it impossible to find the optimal plan for the whole.

The second problem was that the vertical division of work narrowed the way people thought and viewed things. It was difficult for people to think holistically.

The third problem was that it was not possible to visualize the degree to which advertising contributed to the business. It was difficult to see the extent to which advertising, which was a large expense, was contributing to the business.

Another issue with promotions was not knowing what the winning formula was for increasing awareness and promoting usage among non-au users. One of our strengths is the connections we have built with au users in the telecommunications business, and we have been using these connections to increase awareness and promote usage in the "au PAY" business as well. However, we did not have enough know-how on how to approach non-au users. We were not sure how to best combine creative and media, and allocate our budget to achieve this.

The synergy between "MAGELLAN" and "Datorama" has enabled the unification and automation of advertising effectiveness analysis.

Q. What measures did you take to address the issues?

To solve these problems, we launched the "Advertising Effectiveness Analysis Project." We decided to integrate the offline and online media teams and manage all media from one department and one platform. We thought that by integrating the effectiveness verification of all media, we would be able to properly allocate budgets to media that contribute the most.

So we decided to integrate all the data and analyze the aggregated data with "MAGELLAN." We used "Datorama" to integrate the data. A wide range of data was integrated into "Datorama," including not only online media advertising results and the number of page views on brand sites, but also GRP data for offline media such as TV commercials, survey data from third-party research agencies, and "au PAY" payment data. This data was exported to "MAGELLAN" for analysis. We also linked the data so that the analysis results could be managed all at once on the "Datorama" screen.

Overall picture of understanding the effectiveness of marketing measures

Q. It seems like a pretty bold reform, but what were the most difficult aspects?

It was difficult to unify the company's awareness. I tried to carefully explain the significance of this initiative to each person in charge and to the management team. It was important to make them understand that we were not just aiming to reduce labor and costs in the short term, but also to maximize our business through advertising in the medium to long term.

Q. Now that you are able to conduct cross-media analysis, have there been any changes in your organization?

There were two major changes. The first was that we were able to reduce man-hours by consolidating and automating advertising effectiveness analysis. We hadn't realized this before, but after integrating the organization, we found that different teams were actually doing the exact same work. By preventing this kind of duplication of work, we were able to dramatically improve work efficiency.

Secondly, by completing the analysis in a short period of time, we were able to free up time to focus on the next essential task of allocating the budget. The team members' perspectives are also broadening to include mid- to long-term perspectives, such as a full year or several years. We hope that each member will be able to conduct analysis from a higher perspective.

Q. Did you discover any new things in your analysis of "au PAY"?

We were able to find the appropriate allocation of advertising budgets for non-au users, which was an issue. When comparing media evaluations between au users and non-au users, the results were clearly different. When we implemented measures with the optimized allocation, we were able to achieve increased results at a lower cost than the planned budget.

We were also surprised at how quickly we were able to execute this PDCA cycle. We started integrated analysis using MAGELLAN and Datorama in April, and were able to put our budget allocation plan into action just two months later, in June, when we started media buying. By being able to complete the PDCA cycle in such a short period of time, we hope to be able to execute our analysis more frequently and improve the accuracy of our allocations.

Our mission is to maximize the effect with the minimum budget and contribute to the business.

Q. Please tell us about your future plans for using MAGELLAN.

Currently, we are only using MAGELLAN to analyze "awareness," which is our most important communication, but in the future, we would like to add mid-funnel KPIs to the analysis so that we can analyze all communication in a seamless manner. Until now, there was no indicator that could be viewed in a seamless manner, so we hope that by creating this indicator, we will be able to optimize each measure overall.

Scope of analysis in the communication funnel

Q. Lastly, please tell us about your goal in marketing.

The mission of advertising is to maximize the effect with the minimum budget and contribute to the business. However, the model will change depending on the changes in media and the lifestyles of consumers. We would like to aim to maximize the effect while grasping the changes in the world from this initiative, without being bound by past successes.